got the kind of look in your eyes (as if no one knows anything but us)
by safeandsound13
Summary: little au ficlets of stiles and lydia as other iconic otps, because, why not?
1. fitzsimmons

**(i watch a lot of tv shows and am super trash for a lot of ships, but stydia is always lingering in the back of my mind like an infection so this is going to be all little ficlets of au universes in which stydia are other iconic ships. some will be a little longer as others, and some will be featured here more often.**

 **requests are super welcome (there's a 9/10 chance i watch the same show), you can comment or message me on newwaystofallapart13 on tumblr, but i am rarely on there.**

 **song in the title is from ed sheeran's tenerife sea because i am dead inside and have no feelings about anything whatsoever)**

 **.**

 _chapter one: fitzsimmons (aos). and in case you don't watch the show (which you should), they're basically two cute smart scientists who're attached to the hip and figure everything out together. so, lydia and stiles._

. &.

Scott does not under any circumstances think of himself as special.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa—watch it! That's the Bat-Bat gun."

"That's a stupid name for a stupid gun that doesn't even work. Besides, it's on _my_ stuff! How am I supposed to work if it's on my stuff?"

"' _I am vengeance, I am night, I am Batman_ '." There's a pause. "It's a quote? From the comics? Because the gun is used for like, vengeance and it's as invisible and silent as the night? You get it? Tell me you get it."

Two scientist appear into view, the man dawdling with cables and wires and the woman's eyes are narrowed as she browses through a file like the paper's personally offending every cell in her body. "You do realize you'd be Robin in _every_ Batman and Robin scenario, right?"

He looks like she just kicked a newborn kitten before a second later, his eyes light up like a christmas tree. "However completely wrong, that _shallow_ comment gave me an idea—"

She crosses her arms, obviously offended as she cuts in. " _Shallow_? You created bullets with a dose of 0.1 microliters of Dendrotoxin—"

He's rolling his eyes, and Scott feels more and more like he's watching a really intense game of tennis. "—the bullets should be hollow so they can't break apart in the chamber and ruin the element of surprise that is practically _trademarked_ by the Bat Bat gun—"

She's still talking though, too, managing to look the right amount of annoyed and challenged. "—how am I supposed to create instant paralysis on _anything_ even remotely supernatural with 0.1 microliters? Maybe next time you, I don't know, run the specs by me before making the molds or—"

This seems to break him out of his train of thought, arm no longer spastically moving beside his body like it's single-handedly winding up his brain, eyebrows raised at his co-worker. "Well, _you_ 're the one with two PhDs, genius, you should be able to figure it out without my help and—"

She scoffs, pursing her lips as she crosses her arms over her chest. "I don't see why you keep bringing up the fact I have more PhDs than you. What, like it's hard?"

He groans loudly, even looking a little defeated. "You have one more PhD, _one_ —"

"Martinski," Finstock's voice booms through the lab just as the scientist lady opens her mouth to respond to her scientist man friend, and the other two people in the room finally seem to notice they've got company. Scott was getting tired just _looking_ at them talking.

"Martinski?" Scott questions, desperate for any clarification at this point, because for some reason he doesn't think he can handle some freaky twin voodoo mind thing in which they're actually one person or, or holograms, or _whatever_ , on top of everything else that has happened today.

The redhead pulls on the end of her lab coat to straighten it as she stares him down, and if he hadn't been eye to eye with _the_ Allison Argent earlier that same hour, he would've been scared. Like, pee your pants even though you're an adult man _scared_. She nods towards the guy. "Stilinski."

He points his thumb at her, and at least _he's_ grinning, a little goofy as he adds, "Martin." The tall boy uses his hands a lot as he talks, distracting Scott just a little from whatever he's spewing about 'portmanteaus', which he will just assume is a fancy, expensive French wine from now on.

"I'm engineering, she's biochem," Stilinski concludes, like it's a real thing, a combination that can't survive without one another. Dependant. Like Scott should just _know_.

Martin huffs, hands perched in her sides as she presses, " _And_ biophysics."

Stilinski exhales very loudly, before giving her an incredulous look. "Was I _done_ talking? Everyone knows you're like, a certified genius, Martin, no need to rub it in the poor guy's face. I just needed to breathe in between words. Let me live."

Finstock just narrows his eyes at him, slapping him on the back of the head. "Stilinski, are you autistic or something? How many more times do I have to tell you to shut up?"

Stilinski responds with another rant—about how, on a moral level, throwing around the word autism is kind of offensive and on a social level, it's just super rude—that just makes Finstock roll his eyes even further into the back of his head (which can't be healthy and for three seconds makes Scott question whether he's having a seizure or not). Martin backs her partner up by adding references to like, biology and psychology, quoting some fancy people he's sure—he's honestly not even listening anymore by now and instead admiring all the gadgets laid out in front of him.

(He tries touching one, and the lady scientist slaps his hand away without even pausing her sentence or breaking eye-contact midst heated discussion. He'd be impressed, if the device hadn't looked _so_ cool.)

They finally stop talking for the first time since he came in here (it's been fifteen minutes, who are these people even?) when Agent Argent is back, so they can ' _encode her comm_ ' (at first he thinks it's some kind of secret spy code, but it turns out they're actually talking about comms). She's equally pretty as she is scary, so he avoids eye-contact to avoid any further embarrassment besides the blabbering mess he was in her presence forty-three minutes ago.

Stilinski takes one look at the apparatus before slamming it on his desk, breaking it in a million tiny pieces. Allison's grip on her holster tightens, but she doesn't say anything, jaw tightly clenched.

"A comm with an external receiver? Seriously? What's this? The FBI?" He actually chuckles as he takes out a part with a pair of tweezers, like it's some sort of clever joke, but no one seems to get it besides Martin. Who's not exactly laughing, but there's a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth, and that's more of an expression than she's had in the thirty minutes he's known her.

She explains, somewhat polite tone to her voice, "We don't need those for in-ear comms anymore. He'll match your DNA to an embedded sensorineural silicone."

"It's very high-tech. Even for S.H.I.E.L.D., I mean, we did develop it ourselves," he adds, a little bit smug as he continues working on the comm, trading the spastic movements for careful and skilled.

Allison doesn't really seem to care about the details as she turns to Finstock, who's been uncharacteristically quiet for all of the five hours he's known him. "Are we ready for take-off anytime soon?"

He looks up from his phone unimpressed—Scott manages to catch him close a game of _candy crush_ —as he half-yawns, "We're just waiting for Agent Braeden. Always likes to make an entrance that one."

"Who's this Br- _Braeden_? Person again?" Scott asks, finally finding his voice again. He flushes a little red as they turn to him, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. He's not dumb or anything (he could hack the pentagon in under three minutes _if_ he wanted to be a dick), but these people make him feel kind of… inferior. "How many people are in this team, exactly?"

Finstock looks like he's already one hundred _and one_ percent convinced he made a mistake bringing Scott in with the rest of them. " _Braeden_ is the pilot, dumbass. I've told you this?"

"Just the pilot?" Allison cocks an eyebrow skeptically, arms crossed over her chest and her posture stiff but in that ' _I could crack your skull in under three seconds if you gave me any reason to_ ' way. "Agent Braeden is _just_ the pilot?"

A scarred woman with dark eye make-up, black combat boots and half-leather outfit, rucksack casually slung over her shoulder steps in as if it's on cue. Like they rehearsed it, which would be pretty bad ass because it looks like a scene from a action movie. As an afterthought as she's walking up the stairs without any introduction whatsoever, she informs them, "Wheels up in five."

"Like I was saying," Stilinski narrows his eyes dangerously, and Martin's already sighing with a certain kind of fondness he can't quite place before he even continues his train of thought. "The Bat Bat gun is as vital to the survival of human kind as, as the existence of monkeys is to our earth's ecosystem!"

 _Monkeys._

Scott does not, under any circumstances, think of himself as special. But. These people seem to think he is, and it's been awhile since he's liked people, so he thinks he'll stick around. Just for a little bit.

.&.

 **(a/n: a review would be very much appreciated:)**  
 **i'll probably like, rave about you in my diary and tell my mom i've made friends , !)**


	2. (reversed) olicity

_chapter two: reversed olicity (arrow). if you don't watch arrow (why do you hate yourself so much?): lydia was a total fuckboy until she was "stranded on an island" for "five" years and now is a vigilante trying to avenge her father's death. stiles is her socially awkward hacking partner in crime. they have a lot of UST, like, a lot A LOT._

 _._

"St...Stiles? Stiles Stilinski?" He looks up from his computer to find a strawberry blonde woman looking at him, rather confused, too. For good measure, he stops chewing on his pen and tries to look normal. Although his expression goes from 'relatively bored trying to teach a bunch of middle-aged men how to send an email without linking in their creepy porn every five minutes' to 'okay, totally about to lose my chill over this beautiful human being right in front of me' which might not be, like, super common normal. She cocks an eyebrow to herself, looking down at the note in her hand as she mumbles, "What the hell is a Stiles?"

He almost rolls his eyes, but then reminds himself she's like, technically his boss, he thinks so fixes his glasses instead. Still, the sarcasm sippers through a little. "So nice to meet you too."

"Lydia Martin," she introduces herself, lips pursed a little, and he knows who she is, but doesn't really know, so he tries to be casual about it as he shakes her hand. She doesn't say sorry for insulting his name, but whatever, he's a big boy—he will probably not obsessively think about altering his name later on.

"I know," he blurts out, and hey, he tried the casual thing and it apparently is not working out at all. "I mean. Your name's on the side of the building and you were pretty well documented on television before you traded in Beacon Hills for a private chinese island, and." He clears his throat, mentally cursing himself, as he ponders stabbing himself in the leg with his pen. "And all."

"Yeah, living the dream," she deadpans, but the corners of her lips are turned up a little and she almost looks amused. She clears her throat, pulling a laptop out of her bag and pushing the poor thing towards him. It's capital -w, Wrecked. He's pretty sure he looks absolutely spooked, because she elaborates fairly quickly.

"It broke. Prada, my dog, she's super sensitive to loud sounds so while I was watching the Notebook, because I like, adore that movie, she had a little encounter with it anndddd, well, it won't start." She twirls a strand of hair around her finger and she's smiling, almost beaming, in that uncomfortable way that must be hurting her cheeks. It's not really reaching her eyes. He can kinda tell it's an act, the dumb valley girl thing she's trying to pull off.

"Really?" He wonders aloud, rather sarcastically because that's the only way he ever rolls as he raises his eyebrows, leaning back in his desk chair, intertwining his hands on his stomach.

"Yeah," she challenges him, leaning forward and never mind she's the most beautiful girl in the world, she smells really good.

He sits up, opening it and turning it around so she can witness the hot mess that is her laptop. "I'm pretty sure there's a nail stuck in your screen." With great difficulty he whips it out, sliding it over his desk to her, squinting his eyes at her. "A claw, actually."

She smirks, and he blinks at her like an idiot, because wow, he's possibly like completely in love with her. "She's a big dog."

(He's not even a little bit surprised when he finds her on the backseat of his jeep a few weeks later, covered in black warpaint, green leather and real blood. Her kind of scary, used-to-be-a-soldier bodyguard person friend—Allison, patches and stitches her up without even doing so much as blink twice. Just like that, he gets to a much bloodier second base with Lydia than he'd ever imagined, almost electrifies himself and one-ups personal computer geek stuffed in a dark IT department to secret personal computer geek hacking into police servers for his hot vigilante boss stuffed in a dark cave-like basement.

It's pretty cool. And scary. But also, cool.)

.

His heart is beating fairly loudly in his chest, even now, more than a day after she said she loved him. He has to repeat the fact she didn't mean it over, and over, and over again in his head to remind himself it was all a ploy so he could ram a needle into Peter Hale's neck. She didn't mean it when she said that she loved him and she didn't mean it when she said she loved him most. Still, it felt real and he couldn't help that a tiny part of him was hoping that maybe it had been.

Allison is strolling down the beach somewhere ahead of them, giving them some space, since she inadvertently heard about the entire fake, forced, fucked up confession thing. From Lydia, or like, one of his drunken texts. He's not sure.

(The fake, forced, fucked up confession in a nutshell:

"Hale took Jackson because he wants to kill the man I love."

He frowns, because okay, yeah, he knew all about her ancient broken love affair with Jackson and how they were practically meant to be and the second coming of Romeo and Juliet and yadah yadah, but why can't he go into the field with them and like, try and maul someone with his tablet? He could do a million more useful things there than locked up in her old, rich people mansion. "Yeah, I know, so?"

She almost rolls her eyes, but manages to not look too annoyed at having to spell it out for him. "So he took the wrong man."

Her eyes were almost an celestial green in the low light, penetrating into his with such sincerity that he kind of made a strangled noise he managed to morph into an 'oh' just in time, of which he's still embarrassed.)

They halt in the middle of the beach, staring at the sunset and he's kind of in awe of her, you know. She's beautiful and amazing and sometimes even funny, she's a natural leader, and she's good, and she'd give her life to save their city and their people. She came up with it, all of it, how to defeat Hale at his own game, mostly, because she's so— "You're really smart, you know that, right?" His brain to mouth filter falters, like always.

She smiles, the real one she saves for occasions like this, private. "Practically a genius."

His chest feels all warm when he looks at her like this, in the tropical sunlight, hair a little messy, scar on her collarbone peeking out from under her shirt, cheeks a little flushed. It's probably because his brain is super talented at only remembering the 'I love you' part and the look on her face when she had said it, and not the 'do you understand?' part where she pressed a syringe in his hand to cure Hale and his freaky supernatural powers. Not that romantic. And completely manipulative, brain. Not cool.

"Well, as long as you don't pick up any basic computer skills," he grins, and it's probably a little goofy and wouldn't compare to any of Jackson's sexy smirks, but hey. He is who he is. "I'm practically unexpendable."

Her voice is surprisingly soft when she looks at him, so fond and intense, and tells him, "You'll always be unexpendable to me, Stiles."

(He could believe it, you know, that it had been an act. If she didn't smirk at his daily accidental sexual innuendos like they were the greatest things ever said, or if she hadn't broken her vow not to kill to save him from some weird serial killing maniac, or—or frick, didn't look at him sometimes like he was a light guiding her through the darkness, like he was worthy, too.)

He can wait.

.

"We need to talk," she mentions softly, eyes fixated on the newborn in Scott's arms and he nods, reluctantly, because he doesn't want to talk. Granted, that's the most unlike him thing, ever, but maybe for a little while, he wants to be unlike him. Because he, regular him, is having a pretty bad feeling right now.

He follows her into the hallway, anyway, because apparently, he's a masochist and he thrives on rejection. He gets it, he does, he gets how hard this is for her and that she lived on a frickin' island in the middle of nowhere and went to bed thinking she wasn't going to wake up and he doesn't and could never understand, but frack. The point. The point is-he had gotten used to it. Not the rejection—also the rejection—but the fact it was just a one-sided, ill-posed fantasy that was never going to come true, because of lots of reasons. One, just from like, the top of his head, that he's just a dumb hacker and she's this beautiful, broken vigilante that could never be interested in someone like him. But she. She made it real, she asked him out, and she made it real and now. Now he's back there, and broken all over again.

"I'm so sorry," she breathes, exhaling heavily and they're not—they're not anything, not yet anyway, but. But, she is, everything, to him, anyway and he doesn't know how to tell her that, to make her see that when she's staring at her shoes and he's looking over her shoulder at a wall, but not really a wall, trying to turn her words into sense.

She finally looks up at him, swallowing tightly as she opens her fist, like she wants to reach out. "I thought I could be me, and the Banshee, but I can't. Not now, maybe not ever."

He pushes his glasses further onto his nose, trying to buy himself some time. "Just say never then, Lydia. Please." It's not like him to beg, but he knows. He knows that if she doesn't say it, he'll just continue living like this. On standby. Waiting for her.

She opens and closes her mouth, looking at him like—she feels sorry for him. He keeps a surprisingly steady voice, nervously tapping his knuckles against the material of his jeans on the side of his thigh. "We're good together, right?" She doesn't say anything for about 0.03 seconds which means he has to fill the silence and probably ruin everything, but he can't, he can't stay silent about this any longer. "Say you don't feel the same, say you don't feel like, like we have this connection, like—"

Allison and Scott just had a baby, and he's still a little high on the endorphins of seeing a tiny little human and then, then she's kissing him. She's kissing him, and he barely has time to register it. Involuntarily his hand lands on the junction between her neck and shoulder, even though he just tried telling her she can't keep doing this. Playing with his heart until it's dried out and holding forever over his head when she doesn't mean a minute of it. He can feel her scars through the thin material of her top and she looks so real—bare-faced and experienced—and he feels like crying all of a sudden. He loves her, he's pretty sure, and he wants to make this dark world just a little better for her, but he can't, not if she won't let him.

"We're tethered," she mumbles against his lips, eyes still closed and he wants to take it back. All of it. He wants to go back to what they were before, just a tall, awkward, sarcastic hacker occasionally helping out his completely platonic, sort-of-boss vigilante her emotional trauma away. He opens his eyes, swallowing heavily, and he knows he doesn't mean it. He doesn't ever want to go back to what they were before, and he hates her a little because of it.

She abruptly opens her eyes and takes a step backward, licking her lips as she tries to find more words to rip out his heart with. He helps her this time, instead, and it feels a little like reaching down his own chest and squeezing until he sees black.

"Yeah, I know—but it's not enough."

.


	3. jatty

_chapter three: jatty (awkward). if you don't watch awkward (understandable post-s3) is a show where popular guy matty sleeps with socially awkward jenna and then like, ignores her and a lot of awkward shit happens while they realize they should just be together already, and then they break-up, and then get back together again. rinse and repeat, people, rinse and repeat._

.

Stiles never got it when people said popularity was a fake concept created by like, the government and the writers of mean girls or something. Even if it was fake, it was attention, and attention was so much better than being shoved into lockers and getting frickin' atomic wedgies at least three times a day and being ignored by everyone but Scott—best friend—and Mr. Harris—chemistry teacher—which, it wasn't that great. Half of the time Mr. Harris was just shit-talking him anyway and he has it on good authority (gum in his hair, sticky lip gloss stains on all of his plaids, and the smell of rotten bananas and sweaty socks permanently embroidered into his jeans) that the lockers are _never_ actually cleaned.

Now, he knows better. No attention is better than bad attention. It's not like receiving an actual hate letter (on paper. yes. who even still uses paper, haven't you heard of e-mail? think of the damn trees) and accidentally breaking his arm in the most impossible angle weren't bad enough, it's the fact people now thought he was part of that emo-punk band, Stiles Lives, purposely overdosed on sleeping pills and only liked the color black. Also, he's kind of friends with the weird guidance counselor Finstock who shows a weird, almost obsessive interest in his personal life and has visions and he's pretty sure has an alcohol addiction?

Okay, so maybe he should backtrack a little, like, just from the top of his head, summer camp? _Goddamn_ Summer Camp.

Normally, he'd spent his summers playing Call of Duty with Scott and not changing out of the same outfit for weeks on a time, but since they're now in like, high school and college and life prospects and _blah blah blah_ , his dad signed him up for Science Camp.

It's not that he's dumb, or anything, he just—he can never focus. Lydia Martin is there, and she's a camp leader, because—and he _knows_ this (not because he knows her, but because—he notices it, in a non-creepy way, okay?)—she's pretty much a genius. Not only that, he's fairly certain she's the most beautiful girl to ever walk the earth, which. It doesn't help much with the whole focus part.

Faith and luck are never on his side, so he's not assigned to her group (probably for the best, considering his dad would murder him if he came back more _stupid_ because he just stared at her every time she was in his presence) and they've never actually held a conversation, or, like, made eye-contact so it's not like he expected anything to happen. He'd been right, like always.

Besides, you now bumping into a door while he was trying to send her a friendly wave and ending up with a black eye. Falling into a lake because he was too preoccupied with staring at her legs. Accidentally just wearing his Iron Man boxers to breakfast that one time because he'd been up all night talking Scott through the wildest in-character and cross-faction combat of World of Worldcraft yet, and was severely sleep deprived. The usual—just embarrassing the shit out of himself occasionally, pretty much, but after fifteen years of being Stiles Stilinski, he was kind of used to that.

Nothing happened, until. Well, until the (only one ever) goodbye party of Science(nerd) Camp. He doesn't know why anyone thought a party at a frickin' _science_ camp was a good idea to begin with, when half of these guys don't even know how to talk in English instead of Binary and pairing up socially-impaired people with heavy dance required songs (mostly LMFAO? did he accidentally build a time machine and end up in 2008?) never seemed like a good idea, especially when somebody spiked the punch like five minutes in.

He's having a half-decent conversation with a guy from the Thomas Newton cabin, Danny, about the possibility of computers taking over the world, before She cuts in, "I think you've seen Her too many times."

And with She, he means Lydia Martin and not some artificially intelligent computer system. The girl he's had a serious crush on since, like, third grade and he has a serious keeping-his-chill-problem around.

He remains casual though, as he goes into a rant that starts with him talking about Pygmalion, a Greek myth about a sculptor who fell in love with a statue, and ends with quoting three lines from Kate Bush's song Deeper Understanding. He doesn't expect her to answer him with a certain kind of determination, mentioning some UK tv show Black Mirror that stars Hayley Atwell (he'd let her win just for mentioning the queen of Marvel, on principle) and by the end of it they're both a little out of breath.

It's only then he realizes that he was so heated about the topic that he forgot to be embarrassed about it and Danny left somewhere during the conversation to go dance with one of the guys from the astronomy group.

She stares at him for a second, like she's considering him, and then almost does this half-shrug, purse of her lips as she grabs his wrist and pulls him into the supply-closet. Suddenly, they're kissing and she tastes a little like cinnamon and cheap vodka and forcefully pushes him back against the wall.

When her hands disappears in between them and starts unbuttoning his pants (and shit, she smells really good), his brain someone reconnects to his mouth and he manages to get out a, "W-wait, you? With… _me_? I mean, I'm all for it, believe me. I'm so for it. But are you sure? Like one-hundred-and- _one_ percent sure? Have you been drinking? Because if you have, I think you might want to revisit this whole thing later on when—"

Not even in his wildest dreams did he ever have the guts to imagine this moment, not when she's almost ethereal, and he's just—him. But he'd like to think it would be a little bit more romantic than the two of them, a broom poking him the side, in a small space that smells like detergent and minty air freshener.

She squints at him, cutting him off by putting a hand on his chest (that it's coincidentally over his heart is something he only thinks about later). "Shut up. You'll do."

So. It's not that long of a story. He lost his virginity to a girl way out of his league and she proceeded to ignore him and then he received a letter saying he was a loser and he like accidentally staged a suicide while really he was just trying to get rid of a damn headache.

Now it's just all longing glances (on his part, she mostly just looks the other way) in the hallway, and he feels these glimmers of hope blooming in his chest, and sometimes she _smiles_ at him and he just… wants to kiss her. _Really_ kiss her, this time. Not when she surprisingly corners him at a lame party and he's just guessing at where to put his hands or his, his tongue. He wants to kiss her like she's never been kissed, so that, maybe, she'll start feeling what he feels, too.

His life remains just as awkward—naked dick pics emerging from the locker room, him kinda developing a tiny crush on Lydia's best friend because at least she acknowledges his existence, he gets casts as a door knob in the annual 'teen pregnancy is dangerous for your mental health, also don't do drugs' musical and somehow ends up ruining the entire thing when he trips over a cord and breaks the music installation—but he feels like he finally has something to look forward to, in a weird way, because rationally, he knows she would never go for someone like _him_ , but like, emotionally, he feels a connection. So it's all very uncomfortable but he's like, friends with Lydia Martin on Facebook? Which is—at least—ten steps forward in their non-existent relationship compared to last year.

Sometimes they even make-out. Or hook-up. Okay, so he's totally her booty-call. He feels no shame. He's like a dude, and dude's don't have, like, that feeling stuff. Scott does, but Scott's special. So he's cool. He can be a booty-call.

It's an empty classroom this time when she pushes him against the blackboard while unbuttoning her shirt with her free hand, pressing kisses down his throat. He's learned she's not only talented with her head, she's also talented with her hands.

She presses against him until he lifts her up, mouths connected in the middle as she tugs on his hair. His arm's still a little sore from the cast he was in for weeks (also, he has no upper body strength and his flat stomach is basically a product of good genes and the fact he sometimes, from the bench, throws the ball back into game during lacrosse), but he manages to hold her up long enough to get her on the desk, using his free hand to brush a few strands of hair behind her ear.

"What are you doing?"

"Sorry," he mumbles, pressing a sloppy kiss to her cheek as he puts his hands on her ass, instead. She's usually just complaining about him being too gentle, or too much of a prude. He's been kind of conditioned to just reach for either her boobs or butt whenever she talks during their _encounters_. He's learning a lot, actually.

He presses a kiss on the corner of her mouth this time, and he's about to lean back in to kiss her when she pushes him away, glaring. He doesn't even get worried until she starts re-buttoning her blouse. He frowns, gently grabbing her wrists to make her look at him, "Are you—are you okay?"

She roughly jerks herself loose from his grip, pushing him further back so she can get off of the desk. "Look, Stiles. Stop. Just stop. Stop looking at me like that, stop telling me I'm beautiful, stop pretending like we're together, just... Stop."

He feels tired, like he's lived another fifty years that he has no clue about. She knows, she _knows_ that he feels more about her than just this, meeting up in broom closets and abandoned tree houses, that he wants more, and he was content that this was all he was going to get because she didn't feel the same way.

But, he remembers. He remembers that after he ruined the musical she told him he made the entire thing a thousand times better. He remembers that whenever they were at a party and he stared at Allison a little too long, she would leave hickeys. He remembers her cornering Aiden and yelling at him after she found out he took the infamous naked pictures after lacrosse practice. He remembers that time he got a panic attack during driver's ed and she followed him into the bathroom and kissed him, telling him it was to help him, but the way she looked at him, he doesn't know how to explain it but it was like, she was actually seeing him, not just looking.

He can't be happy with just this anymore, not when he thinks she feels more, too.

"Lydia, I like you. I kind of thought it was obvious so I never acted upon it, because, well. We both know why. I'm, I'm kind of maybe not what you're looking for, you don't have to apologize for that, ever, I mean, _I_ wouldn't even be into me, and you're probably embarrassed of me, but, I don't know—it's okay if you don't like me like that, just tell me, because we're more than, than _this_ , right? We're—we're friends."

"You don't like me," she snaps, kind of surprising him, because like, out of all of the things in his life, he thought this was the most certain. Stiles likes Lydia, always kinda had, always kinda will. She looks a little defeated, but keeps her chin up, as she harshly adds, "You like Lydia Martin."

For a second, he just blinks at her, because that makes no sense. Of course he likes Lydia Martin, that's the entire point of this conversation. He vaguely considers her coming out to him as some secret supernatural creature, or, like, someone that's in the witness protection programme before it clicks.

He shrugs, "It started out like that, sure. I mean, I didn't _really_ know you, I just knew of you. And, of course, you're super beautiful and you have amazing legs and your hair is like, braided by tiny elves every morning," it's the damn truth, "but I learned that you're actually even smarter than I thought, and you're kind when you think no one will notice, and you care, about other people and you secretly want them to be happy and you're honestly the best leader this school has, I mean, taking our sucky academic decathlon team to Nationals?" He shakes his head to himself, like he still can't believe it. "I think that was kind of a miracle. Isaac was locked up for most of his life and you got him to score above average on the subjective event by just trash-talking Hitler for four minutes. You even got me to focus for more than five minutes. And what about—"

"Shut up," she says, lamely, voice soft, and his heart is beating so loud that he almost doesn't hear her. She repeats herself, stronger and louder this time, like she's trying to prove something. He fucked up.

She puts her hand on his neck, tentatively, like she's trying it out, and then swallows hard, eyelids fluttering closed. "I was never embarrassed of you, Stiles." It probably sounded way more intimate than she had intended to because her eyes spring open at the sound of her own confession.

She licks her lips, staring up at him. "I like you, too."

"Really?" He asks, dumbfounded, because, well. Hello.

She nods, and the time within he sports a shit-eating grin probably breaks at least five records somewhere.

"Really?" He repeats, and just because, he like, wants to check this isn't a dream, he brings up a hand to cup her cheek. Five fingers. Life is awesome.

His smile is just straight up goofy now, he's sure, because she rolls her eyes. "Either a, kiss me, or b, start talking more about how amazing you think my legs are." (She's trying really hard to hide her smile, but he notices.)

"Well, they look good when you wear a skirt, that's for one. They're soft, and shiny—"

She groans, leaning her head against his shoulder. "I hate you."

He laughs, pressing a kiss against her hair and she looks up at him, calculating, a little funny, even, before she seems to decide, pressing her lips against his. It's the same thing they've been doing for a while, but it feels different, somehow. It's slow and deep and she likes him.

Soon enough he's without a shirt, pants down to his ankles and she's without her bra, skirt up to her waist, and—because the universe wants to remind him that just because he caught a lucky break, it still wants to fuck with him accordingly—an entire class walks in on them.

He'd say something sappy like, that it was less of a big deal because now they're actually a thing and they both like each other and they're dealing with it together and shit, but nope. Still awkward. So awkward.

.


	4. bellarke

**(a/n: hi bitch bet you thought you'd read the last of me. ha Ha i should be tumblr famous, !**

 **to be honest i had a little difficulty with this one because i had a hard time envisioning stiles as bellamy, but i tried to make it work because fiction and YOLO lmfao ok**

 **let me know what you think and as always requests are still welcome!)**

.

 _chapter four: bellarke (the 100). a cute blonde bisexual princess and a hot overprotective daddy take care of about a 100 children while trying not to get killed by either native earthlings, nature or each other!_

 _. &._

When they first come to the ground, she hates him. He's smart, and resourceful, and maybe these actually would be redeeming qualities if he wasn't such a selfish ass.

He wants to make the rules and is controlling and he's making people take of their bracelets, so—so _what_ exactly? The people on the Ark think they're all dead by radiation, and they die, too?

Things escalate when she wakes up one morning to find her best friend, Danny—the one she blamed for her father's death, for her mother's betrayal, for how broken she felt after losing her father—bled out after one lethal blow.

She finds a knife near Danny's body with the initials I.L. and she wants retribution for what he did to her best—to her _friend_ , but she needs the people to know, they deserve to know. Just like the people of The Ark had deserved to know about the defects to the filtration system, abou the ship's death sentence, about how the council sent one hundred defenseless kids to the ground. They deserve to know who betrayed one of their own.

Stiles protests—because when does he not protest anything she has to say—but she can't listen to him, not when she knows she's right, deep down to her bones. Like her dad, like she'd been right the first time, back on The Ark.

The people need someone to blame for the death of their own, and she gives them what they want. A person to blame—without second-guessing, without a trial, without consideration. She does what she wants, preaches the mantra Stiles been spewing since day one and they almost end up killing Isaac over it.

They want to hang him, screaming murder and blood and fire and pain. They want to see him suffer.

It's not—that's not what she wanted and she can't make it stop, she can't make them listen.

"This is your fault," he screams, after she grabs him by the jacket shakes him, tells him to help her make it _stop_. "I told you not to tell them, and you did anyway."

"Please, Stiles. This isn't you, this isn't who you are," she pleads, licking her lips, as she tilts her head in the hopes of him giving in. "I saw you with Matt. You're not a killer."

She watched him, with a blade in his hand, willing to stop his friend from suffering after being hit by the acid fog, but his hands were trembling and his brow was furrowed and his eyes were glazed over with tears. He pretended like it hadn't mattered, killing Finstock like that, taking a life. Like he could just as easily take another one, that that was all he was now. A killer.

She'd done it for him, taken the blade from him and taken Matt's life, so he wouldn't have to, so he could live with himself another day, so he could help her save Isaac's life, _now_. He'd looked at as she'd done it, and for the first time she noticed something else in his eyes besides resent.

He's looking at her now, too. She searches his eyes, but what she'd seen then is long gone now, replaced by distrust and betrayal. Like she'd taken a knife and stabbed him, this time.

He clenches his jaw, jerking his jacket out of her grip. "This one is on you." He fires the fuel, gives the people what they want because he can't stop them from getting it anyway, until.

Until a little child, not a day older than twelve, Cora, admits that she did what everyone thought Isaac did, that she killed Danny because all she saw when she looked at him was his father, and how his father had taken away her parents. She slayed the demons Stiles had told her, too, during the acid fog, and that one was on him.

Isaac presses the blade against her neck, cold and stinging, demands Cora in return for her life. He wants to see her pay, like everyone had wanted to see him pay. Stiles actually looks conflicted for half a second, before she reminds him the child comes first. Cora jumps off the cliff before Stiles can grab her and another one of the hundred dies.

"He doesn't deserve to live, either, not when—he deserves to die," Stiles spits, dirt on his face and under his fingernails and he's just a boy, just a human, like the rest of them but something made him this way.

"We don't decide who lives or dies," she bites back, just as heated, just as passionate, "Not down here."

"I swear to God, if you say the people get to decide I'm literally going to jump off this cliff, too." She's about to remind him how distasteful that actually is, but decides to just send him a look instead. "You were right, before. But there have to be rules, Stiles."

He huffs, and she cuts him off before he can say anything else. She knows what he's going to say, how he's going to say it, full with hatred of the way she was brought up and how he had to fight for enough rations to last himself, his mother and the sister he hid for seventeen years underneath his floorboards. "We can make the rules _together_."

Over time, she learns they work. Like a team, like leaders. That he did what he had to do because he wanted to save his sister, save Allison, and granted—he was being a selfish ass trying not to get floated (or whatever earthly equivalent the council would come up with) the second Finstock and his people touched the ground. So she _hadn't_ been wrong.

Shooting the chancellor to accompany his sister hadn't been his brightest idea, but she honestly thinks they might not have made it without him. (Might. She's still pretty awesome by herself, anyway.)

They send Isaac off on his own, to fend for himself, to let nature decide whether he gets to live or die, and when he returns, his brings death.

She collapses first and he probably collapses sometime after her, since she's there by his side when he wakes, even surprising herself. She offers him some water, and he thanks her with his hand on the small of her back.

"You feel better?"

She nods, adding a wary "yeah" as he quickly pulls his hand away.

"Good."

Kira and Liam manage to blow up the bridge that would have carried a grounder army on their way to kill all of them, and it's never felt this good to see something _burn_.

"Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," she mumbles, more to herself than anyone else. But of course he's there, by her side, watching the smoke from the bridge disappear into the air. "It's Oppenheimer. He was—"

"I know who Oppenheimer is," he responds, and when she looks at him, he's already looking at her. "J. Robert Oppenheimer. Born 1904. Thought it was a good idea to create not one, but multiple atomic bombs." He looks back at the sky."And actually, that quote is from a Hindu scripture the Gita. Apparently lives wasn't the only thing he liked stealing."

Okay, so she's a little impressed.

.

Her voice is hoarse and cracks when she uses it, and she has to physically force it, but she manages, "You can't go."

He chuckles, adjusting his rifle so it's aiming at the sky and not digging into his skin with every step he takes. "I know we agreed to work together and all, but awkward forced acquaintances is still levels away from taking orders from you, princess."

"Stiles," she presses, a little annoyed as she halts them, putting her hand on his shoulder, or more like grabbing onto the material of his jacket. He looks tired and he's sweaty and there's a little dirt on his nose, but he still looks at her like she hung the moon. She watches a few people move past them, makes sure they're not listening. Her grip, and her eyes, soften, as she swallows tightly. "I can't lose you, too, okay?"

("Love is weakness," a girl named Malia tells her. She's a leader, a force of nature. And Lydia is smart, but she's never led an army before. She's not smart like _that_ , so she has no choice but to believe her. To ingrain the words inside her system like a mantra, like a shield, to protect herself and her people.)

He raises his eyebrows. "I thought you didn't want me going out there, either?"

His sister went with the grounders to try and find Scott, who she is ninety percent sure went off the rails again, she had to kill Jackson—whom she'd loved so much even after what he did to those innocent grounders, to her—had to kill him with her bare hands and, and most of their friends are still locked up in Mount Weather. Lydia is here, she's here with him and she's desperately avoiding eye contact. "I was being weak."

He nods, because when he says he won't follow her anywhere just because she was asking, he's lying. She's not ready to accept that yet, so she lets him leave. What's left of the hundred need him. She needs him, because of—like _that_ , too.

He saves them, her plan is shit and Malia betrays her and people get hurt, but he saves them. He saves her. He won't let her do it alone, kill all those people. (A part of her thinks he might be doing it so he can get credit for saving the Sky People, but that part of her is dark and buried deep down within and doesn't trust anyone. Not even herself.)

Her hands on the lever, and she's thinking of all the people who'll have to die to save her people, and how she shouldn't have trusted the only person who told her from the beginning whatever she felt for her was weakness, and then his hand is on top of hers.

"Together," he offers, and she nods, once, stiffly, once it dawns on her what he's really offering her. He's offering to take part of the burden, and she lets him.

He takes part of the burden, offers to forgive her, almost begs her to stay, to not leave him alone. Not that he says it in so much words, and not that she is ready to think about him or anyone else like that, but it's clear in the way he looks at her. It's not enough. Not any of it is enough.

"You know, back on the Ark, I knew who you were. I know you didn't know me, but I was always… aware. When we came down I just thought that I was wrong about you, that you weren't the person that I thought you were, that you were blinded by the way you were raised like the rest of them. But you are, Lydia. You are truly a _good_ person. You're smart and kind and you care." He swallows hard and she's going to miss him and his bad jokes and his useless random facts and his _stupid_ ramblings. "So if you need forgiveness, I'll give that you."

"I bear it so they don't have to," she interrupts his pleading, because she can't take it anymore, can't look at anyone anymore, without feeling the crushing guilt of killing an entire community to save her own. He looks at her, brown eyes warm and familiar and a tiny part of her hates that she has to leave them behind. She wipes away a tear with the back of her hand before she leans up and presses her lips against his cheek. "May we meet again."

He echoes her words, wiping away his own tears with his thumb before walking back into the camp. She tells herself she can leave, she can heal, she can run away from her problems for a while because—because they have him, and she believes in him, trusts him, and he'll keep them safe. He will.

.&.


	5. westallen

**DISCLAIMER: UHM listen im not at all for whitewashing bc YIKES and am very HAPPY that iris west is portraited by a black actress aka the cutest muffin candice patton so i'm not trying to replace her with precious flower holland roden AT ALL im just applying the general storyline of the flash to teen wolf. i hope i havent made anyone uncomfortbale by this because that is not at all my aim!**

 _chapter five: westallen (the flash). in case you missed it, the flash is an awesome dc superhero show about a superfast metahuman, that is secretly just a love story about barry and iris defying space and time to fall in love, get married, have babies, and basically be together forever._

.

He's always believed there was something… more. Whether it be a higher power or something magic or, or the supernatural. From believing in the monsters in every scary movie, to knowing that something killed his mother, to hoping the superheroes in his favorite comics were real. He always believed.

He never actually thought something like that could happen to him .

To someone like used to be a real rich and real bad boy turned badass vigilante after five years on an island Jackson Whittemore and actual super angel sent to earth to protect her supercousin from harm Allison Argent , sure.

But… Stiles Stilinski? The guy who only knows how to defend himself with sarcasm-and if that doesn't work maybe a baseball bat-and literally rambles nonsense so much that one time a doctor put him on voice rest for a weekend? That Stiles?

He's the kind of guy to slip on a pool of chemicals during some particle explosion caused storm and die of secondary injuries. He's the kind of guy to be hit by lightning and die from cardiac arrest. He's the kind of guy that would be in a nine month coma and just die . Not wake up and be miraculously fast and like, the only person voluntarily protecting his city.

He guessed you could say he didn't choose the meta-human life, the meta-human life chose him. Quite literally. He was hit by lightning , and everything.

And it's strange, because his actual hero, Peter Hale, turns out to be the one who rescued him. (Normally his paranoid self would think that was slightly fishy because why him, but Peter Hale prize-winning, world famous scientist, man. That's the dream.) His two assistants-some asian doctor Kira and a hispanic tech dude called Scott-apparently helped keep him alive for nine months.

He survived for nine months on nothing but liquid food with vitamin supplements and relatively no physical activity, and woke up with abs . That didn't sound like his life at all.

(The doctor girl Kira, talked a lot of not really sense while pushing her glasses back onto her nose every three words, using phrases like "your QRS complex" and "electrophysiological tachyarrhythmia" (biology was never his strong suit) while Peter Hale sat in his wheelchair all dark and gloomy, and he was not petting a cat in his lap, but Stiles kind of feels like he should've been petting a cat in his lap.

Scott, the guy that was pigging out on cheetos while watching a video of really cute kittens and actually having ten orange digits like a five year old, raised his eyebrows, unimpressed. "You like, flatlined a lot or something before we brought you here because your heart was beating super fast and the hospital didn't figure it out because none of the doctors there were as smart as Kira.")

Because he needed the reassurance that he didn't wake up in some sort of alternative universe or like, one of the layers of hell that was particularly screwed up and giving him everything he wanted in life before ripping it away, or frack, that he was still in that damn coma-he went to see Lydia.

Honestly, she'd always been the only constant in his life. From always being the odd one out at school to his mom dying and his dad wrongly being put behind bars for her murder and having nothing left, to having to live with her and her mom and rebuilding his life, she'd been there through it all. His true north.

(Also, he's kind of a little bit and absolutely in love with her. If that wasn't clear yet.)

He finds her where he thought he'd find her, at the tutor centre where she spends all her extra time when she isn't hunting down her next article, because some things never seem to change.

She's doing that thing with her nose, a little scrunched up as she's reading over her student's answers, which is both adorable and reminding him of how much he missed her, even though for him it feels like yesterday since he was hit by giant lightning bolt. She's brushing her hair behind her ear, clenching a pencil in her other hand while she starts to explain something to her student, freezes mid-sentence when her eyes land on his.

"Stiles," she breathes, and she slowly rises up from her seat, blinking at him like she's trying to convince herself he can't be real. He smiles, and it seems like that's all it takes for her to be over there in less than three seconds.

She throws her arms around his neck and in his memory it's all really cool and smooth and romantic and slow mo, but in reality they must've looked a little stupid-almost tripping over his own feet before bumping into Lydia, how he picks her up and almost drops her, and her arms so tight around his neck that he legit couldn't breathe for like five seconds. This all surrounded by a bunch of minors. Not creepy at all.

"How are you… I watched you die, Stiles. Your heart, it, it kept stopping and you kept dying and there was nothing I could do." She's frowning at him, almost like she's angry, or feels betrayed. And it hurts him, too. To think of not getting any more time with her. Of dying, without-he doesn't know how to describe it. She's his best friend, above all.

"Lyds," he grins, goofily, takes her hand and puts it over his heart. "It's beating. Like, superhumanly fast because I haven't been outside in like two thirds of a year and the sun actually hurt my skin a little back there and if I walk too fast I get like really dizzy, but overall it's…" He takes a deep breath. "I'm here."

She cocks an eyebrow, tilting her head slightly and he almost laughs at how she hasn't turned off teacher mode. "Yeah, really fast. Did Dr. Yukimura even check up on you before you stormed out?"

"I'm fine, I promise." And he hugs her again, hands still connected on his chest and his other in her hair, pressing his cheek against the side of her head, just because he can.

"Is this real?" She asks, pulling away, and there's still some disbelief in her voice as she stares up at him, sterile light reflecting off her hazel eyes.

"It is," he presses, because he needs it to be real, too. She sniffs, wipes away any leftover tears and just as she opens her mouth, a kid behind her trips and for a second, everything goes in slow motion.

The real kind, too, the one he didn't make up in his head. Because of this (since he is still Stiles and has no athletic capabilities whatsoever and all), he manages to catch the book the kid obviously won't be able to contain from flying out of his hands. He blinks, and time goes back to normal.

He hands the book over to a thankful awkward teenager before turning back to his best friend, who, by the way, has never looked this good as she has today. No make-up, hair down in waves, one of her more casual dresses. He really missed her-time having been an incomprehensible abstract concept for unconscious him, or not.

She looks impressed, arms crossed over her chest. "Nice reflexes. Glad to see that coma had some positive effects on your motor functions."

"Too soon." He laughs and she's sporting that special Lydia smile as she throws her arm around his waist and they start walking back to her student, squeezing softly. "I'm really glad you're back."

It had been his first encounter with his superspeed, but back then he kind of didn't even think twice of it. Maybe some weird nine month coma side-effect, or like. Lydia standing in front of him, in the flesh, for the first time in those nine months not thinking he'd be a vegetative plant for the rest of his natural born life.

It's been nine months, almost a year, and a lot has changed and he accepts that, he really does. He hadn't expected anyone to put their lives on hold for him. But, that doesn't mean it stings any less when he goes to visit her at the centre the day after and her mom's partner Parrish managed to reach her before he could and seems to be sexually assaulting her with his tongue .

So much for it finally being his time.

.

So, he's always known he loved Lydia; and her mom's always known because Lydia got her smarts from her and Natalie has this all-telling gaze that you'd think was metahuman; his own dad knows because he knows him; and other people could obviously just tell . Like Scott, because he's like really bad at hiding his emotions and apparently looks at her " like she's the last marshmallow on your way to victor a chubby bunny challenge, bro, you know, with the happy tears from finally almost being relieved from the pain and all " and Kira, because she doesn't even bother to stop eating her sushi to tell him that " the only thing you said during your nine month coma was her name, dude ". Hale sends him shady looks all the damn time when he even does so much as mention her name. In conclusion, that narrows it down to pretty much everyone. Except for… well, Lydia.

And probably Parrish. But he prefers not to think about him whatsoever.

He figures he should tell her, you know. Not because he wants to force her into a one-sided relationship out of guilt, or because it'll make him feel better for laying that on her after all these years, or because it's worth risking their friendship over, but because she's Lydia, and she's his best friend, and she deserves the truth.

Since he can't tell her about being the Streak, as she'd so lovingly doned him in her articles, (because bad metahumans and danger and ties to him and stuff) but he could tell her this , he had to tell her this . It wasn't the entire truth, but it was part of it, part of why he couldn't tell her the whole thing.

It's Christmas, or it almost is, and he's a little buzzed on her grandmother's eggnog recipe and she's gushing over the old, dusty Little Mermaid tape with her dad's birthday message written on it that he managed to recover from a thrift shop after all these years of searching, when he just blurts it out. Granted, blurting out things is kind of his trademark by now. Like being clumsy, and awkward, and super late all the time.

"I love you, Lydia."

"Aww, I love you, too, idiot," she beams, looking up from the tape and reaching out to pinch his cheek, playfully condescending. This is it, all or nothing.

"No. I love you. When we were kids I loved you before I even knew what the word love meant, and I-" he pauses, takes in a shuddering breath, struggling to find the right words. He can't tell her about the Man in Yellow tormenting his life, or taunting him with his mother's murder, about him not being able to catch him and free his dad, but he-he can tell her this, he owes her this. "You know, my mom died and, I had to go live with the girl I'd had a crush on since third grade. And I've wanted to tell you so . Many. times."

She's looking up at him, cold and distant, and his heart is already breaking a little, but he can't stop now.

" Prom! " He offers, the first thing coming to mind, "when you wore that shiny pink dress? That guy Aiden stood you up and it took me half an hour to convince you you didn't have a crying face and your make-up looked fine before you even considered going back into that gym with me for a dance." She smiles, vaguely, but it doesn't reach her eyes and she refuses to look at him. He's talking too much, God-he's talking too much, but he can't stop.

"But stuff came up, you know. College and work and a, a particle accelerator exploding in our city. So I never said anything, and I-I lost so many people. My mom, and my dad, and I was just so afraid that, if I told you how I really felt and you wouldn't feel the same way, that'd I'd lose you, too. I would fricking die before I let that happen. But, but." He swallows hard, tight, closes his eyes for a second to collect himself. "I guess that's the way life works. I was so scared of losing you, that I did."

He looks at her, really looks at her, reaches out to touch her, one lone tear rolling down her cheek, but doesn't. He's had a long time to process all of this, process all his feelings, but she hasn't. "I know I've had our whole lives to tell you this, and you're with Jordan now, and my timing sucks, it always has, but…"

She stares at him, eyes wet and pained and he never meant to do this to her. He can't, it feels like he's pushing her further away with every word he says, what is he supposed to do now, how is he supposed to fix this? "I couldn't lie. To you. Not anymore. I'm sorry."

He gets up, and she opens her mouth to say something, but she doesn't. He nods, licks his lips before nodding to himself, decisive and final, leaving her mom's house.

" I'm with Jordan, Stiles ," she texts him later that night, diplomatic as ever (not even ONE emoji), while he's fighting the man in yellow and is practically dying. Scott gives him a clap on the shoulder, offers to finally take him up on that offer to finally watch Star Wars and Kira smiles sympathetically, offers him a hug, because they share everything these days, and that's that.

.

She finds out, because she's Lydia and she's a genius and good at what and everything else she does. What she does is journalism, and apparently not minding her own damn business.

She found out before, but he collectively found out he is not only super fast, he's so fast he can time travel (yeah, what the fuck) and had to do so in order to save his city and everyone in it from a mega-tsunami, so gone was that particular timeline and Lydia knowing about his secret (yeah, still, what the fuck ).

It was even the good kind of timeline, in which he told ( showed ) her about being the Flash himself and she confessed her feelings (all "maybe I couldn't stop thinking about you either, maybe I do share your feelings, Stiles " and tentative smiles) and they kissed (KISSED, on the lips, with her mouth on his).

But no one knows about what happened, except for him, and he can't tell anyone either in case that knowledge changes his current timeline, which is some real cruel punishment. He got to kiss her, man, and even though it was technically fake, he couldn't even gloat about it. Yeah, he still doesn't understand it half the time either, because what the fuck? Time travel .

They've figured out Peter Hale is evil by then, because he should've trusted his paranoid distrustful gut from the get-go, and the fraud has Jordan Parrish locked up somewhere after snatching him away during his proposal to Lydia. If he wasn't immune to it, this would be the exact kind of situation that would make him turn to alcohol.

She steps in the examination room, arms crossed and kicking at nothing, just as Kira finishes up checking his vital signs after he literally just got his ass handed to him by the Reverse Flash (AKA The Man in Yellow AKA the one who murdered his mom when he was eleven years old), again.

"Hi, Stiles." She clears her throat, lips pursed in what he guesses is anger. "Or should I say the Flash?" Figures she has to be super dramatic about it, too.

"Uhm," Kira exclaims, alarmed, eyes huge as she struggles with putting her flashlight back into her lab coat before pointing her thumb at the door. "I guess, I'll just, yeah."

The suddenness of it all has him stuttering. "H-h-ow?" Okay, so he's in his full Flash suit right now, but still. She didn't seem surprised, at all. Also, what's up with people being able to just walk into their super secret lab undetected?

"Maybe because I'm not stupid, Stiles," she spits, then shakes her head, like she's disappointed with herself. "It all adds up. The Flash didn't appear until miraculously, you woke up from your nine-month coma. Your little lies and excuses, conveniently timed with every metahuman attack in the city." She gives him a challenging look, daring him to defy her. He doesn't.

"I called in a favor with a friend, Danny. The one who's really good with computers and didn't do some jail time for hacking into the Pentagon, he's that good. He managed to turn a blurry image of the Flash into you, Stiles Stilinski , my supposed best friend." She raises her eyebrows, leans back against the wall. "Also, I did some research about StarLabs, your two little helpers and your evil sugar uncle, since I figured the suit-a product made by, surprisingly , their expertises combined-didn't come with the explosion. I looked at the blue prints of this building, including that holding facility you have, and considering most of the metahumans seem to disappear after the Flash handles them, well. You catch my drift."

She scoffs at the look on his face, shakes her head again, pursing her lips. "I've suspected it for a while now, but then I always thought, you know, Stiles. Stiles wouldn't lie to me. Not like that."

"Lydia, I promise it's not what you think-" He tries, but his heart's not in it. Lying to Lydia when she doesn't know he's lying is one thing, but doing it to her while she knows… He can't recover from that.

"I'm sorry," she spits back, brow furrowed together and fists balled like she's ready to fight him. She looks like she'd win too. "Did you not lie to me, for months, straight to my face?"

"I did." He admits, eyes closed. He sighs, heavily, holding up his hands in some sort of lame attempt at a defense. "But, being linked to the Flash, even though he's a hero, he's anything besides that to every bad guy in this city and, it's, it's dangerous and your mom, she asked me if I-" Saying it out loud really uncovers all the holes in his theory.

She scoffs, unimpressed. "If you want me to punch you in the throat, I suggest you continue."

Okay, it does sound condescending, wrong and distrustful of her self-efficacy, maybe even a little misogynist. But really, he was trying to protect her. Without her having any say in it, but he really was.

He opens his mouth, but for the first time in a long time he thinks it's better if he doesn't say anything.

She runs a hand through her beautiful strawberry blonde hair, lips pursed in thought as she goes over his words again. Then, she finally speaks, soft, but strong, "You asked me if we could still be friends after you confessed your feelings for me and I told you no, because I thought we could still be best friends."

He swallows, tight, un-balls his fist to reach out for her, to do something, but he can't. He already knows what she's going to say, and that'll hurt more than anything any meta-human could ever do to him.

She looks at him, and there's a kind of hurt, betrayal in her eyes, leaving a mental image that he fears he won't ever be able to get rid off. She shakes her head at him, then, the KO-punch, "But right now, I don't even think that's possible. I don't know if it ever will be again."

(Later, when he's fighting the Reverse Flash, coughing up blood trying to outrun what he can't outrun, she tells him, "You can do it, Stiles. You can win, you can figure out how to win. You always figure it out." and he can't help but feel a little spark of hope.)

.


	6. fitzsimmons II

_chapter six: fitzsimmons (aos), part two. you remember, right? the two science babies part of a super secret spy team that constantly bicker and are very cute and stiles and lydia, basically? okay. great._

 _._

Scott has never even left the state, let alone he's been to Peru . It's kind of a shame they're spending all of their time in an ancient cave, if you ask him.

Stiles (apparently that's what people call him sometimes, and by people, he means Martin) has been babbling on about Peruvian Wildlife for almost ten minutes now, kneeled down in front of his precious S.H.I.E.L.D. case, putting together tiny robots as they wait for his partner in science to arrive (he thinks this is the first time he's actually encountered one of them on their own). Scott is trying really hard to listen and offer him encouraging nods here and there, but when he starts talking about plants and birds, it's so hard not to fall asleep against the nice, comfy five-hundred year old wall.

Martin, eyebrows raised, throws her silver metal case on top of the make-shift table in front of them, making him scramble up into a more upright position, "You do know they have snakes here, too, right?"

Stiles hisses, waving her off and Scott sends her a questioning glance. He's known them for like, three days, and she's already used to his questioning glances. He about two hundred percent sure they choose the wrong person for the job when they asked Scott orphan, high-school dropout, no life experience beside cyber life McCall to be part of their super secret spy stuff team.

She sighs, opening her mouth to speak when Stiles gives in and does it himself, "Snakes are freaking evil, dude. Like, they smell with their tongue. Their tongue . They don't bite, they just swallow-so when they get you, you're just like, being swallowed for ten hours, which would SUCK. And they literally don't have eyelids! They don't blink, dude. That's just fu-"

The other scientist claps her hands together, annoyed, lips pursed. "Okay, let's release the DWARFs, shall we?" Lydia cuts him off, tight smile on her face as she narrows her eyes at him. He obeys though, taking out some kind of controller and making his tiny robots come to life.

"Dwarfs?" Scott made the connection between their tiny robots and the whole disney naming thing, but still. He could use some sort of explanation.

The redhead opens her mouth but Stiles cuts her off hastily, obviously very proud as he recites, "Drones Wirelessly Automated to Retrieve Forensics."

"He really wanted it to spell DWARF. He spend about three days on that name," Lydia adds, dryly as she rolls her eyes, one of the quad-copters disappearing into a giant hole in the ground. He only responds by knocking his shoulder into hers as they watch their bot on a screen on his controller. Scott doesn't miss the smile she usually tries very hard to hide.

They're an odd pair those two.

.

In the last weeks he's been all over the world, been abducted by a supernatural inhuman and held hostage by a bunch of semi-soldiers-but he had never been asked to infiltrate a party, without any training whatsoever, only accompanied by a compact mirror ("We were honestly expecting Agent Argent to go in on this, I mean, you're adorable and all with the whole 'I'm a tiny puppy dog' thing you got going on, but you can't tell the difference between a hug and a lethal move." "Besides, guys can be vain. Ask my ex." Damn Martinski) to flirt with an obvious villain and get his team inside his property until today. Never know what to expect when you're with Shield.

He's trying his best to focus on whatever Peter Hale and his slimy hairdo are saying, but it's kinda difficult when two scientists are having a full on conversation in your ear.

"Stiles, you're on my hair."

"I told you this car was a bad idea, who brings a rental to a party that is being thrown in a mansion the size of an island ? Even I wouldn't do that, and I have zero class."

"You're being paranoid, like always. There's no way that guy-"

"He saw us, Lydia . We were almost made if it hadn't been for my-"

A hiss and then, "You're stealthy tackle? I almost broke my right ulna, not to even mention the fact you ripped my sweater. My five-hundred dollar, cashmere sweater."

"I weigh like 149 pounds, and even with the speed that I was going, that's not nearly enough force to break an ulna and you know it." There's a pause. "Do you think I'm fat?"

"Jesus Christ," it's Finstock this time, and he sounds rather desperate. Scott can almost see his agent-in-charge facepalming, if you know, he wasn't watching Peter Hale smirk his way into his own metaphorical hacking pants. At least he severely hopes they're metaphorical. Heterosexuality aside, Diabolical Psycho Trying To Murder His Way Into World Domination wasn't his type exactly.

Peter asks him something but all Scott sees is that his lips are moving so he smiles politely, quickly taking a sip of his champagne and announcing, in a rather loud voice, that he needs another one. Super casual, Scott, super casual.

"Can you," a hopeless sigh, "just move a little to the right?"

"Yeah, sure." There's dead-silence. Then, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that, it's just like we're in the. back . of a car and there isn't much room, so, so I like, I - I didn't mean to! Please don't file a sexual harassment case. I already have that restraining order on my permanent record that you obviously know about and I honestly - I'm so, so, so sorry. I mean, you're okay in that department and all but that's beside the point. I just don't want you to like, develop some sort of inferiority complex. NOT! Not that my opinion matters or anything. Okay."

It isn't too hard to figure out what just happened, but Scott figures he can laugh at them about it later, after he like, doesn't get killed in the process of planting a damn mirror in some rich, evil guy's house.

"For christ's sake," he hears Allison mumble over the comms as he roams the halls. Their five-way convo is getting kind of awkward, if you ask him.

He finally finds the nearest bathroom and connects the mirror to Hale's in-house security system so Stiles can open the gates to let Argent and Finstock in. He gets shot at, jumps out of a building and is a little wet in the aftermath of it all (there was a pool below the balcony) - but. Okay, so he's not so good at the whole undercover agent thing yet, but Allison totally comes to his rescue and doesn't kick his ass, so it's like, maybe all worth it?

.

"My finger is literally in someone's eye, an eye that happens to be able to explode any minute, and you want to have this conversation now ?" Boyd only grumbles at the mention of her finger in his eye, Scott has to give him that.

"You left a liver next to my lunch ."

"It's for science, Stilinski."

"It's a liver. Next to my lunch, Martin."

"Any second now, Stiles."

"I'll promise to tell you which color wire not to cut if you promise to never leave an organ anywhere near where we eat."

Scott, desperately looking away from his screen and over at Finstock who's glued to his phone reading a blog from Perez Hilton, decides to just cut in, "Uhm, guys . Allison just looked at her own reflection, you don't have much more time before they figure out she's not Boyd and they detonate his face-"

The strawberry blond doesn't even seem to notice he said anything and looks more appalled by what her partner in science implied. "That's ridiculous. You know in order for me to conserve biological tissues long enough to study them, I need to keep them at a low temperature and since Finstock gambled away the only one in our lab for Knicks tickets, it's vital that I use the one in the kitchen to store them instead."

He didn't hack into like, an HYDRA robot eye for Vernon to die like this. He hopes this is all conveyed in the pressing glare he sends the both of them.

"Fine. Not on any of my belongings, like the desk where I work at."

She sighs, clenching her jaw as she uses her gloved hand to straighten her safety glasses on her nose, "Nothing here belongs to you. Everything belongs to S.H.I.E.L.D., the people who pay us. Now, you mind telling me which wire not to cut while I try not to murder an agent of our own?"

He huffs, uncrossing and recrossing his arms as he stares her down. She stares right back, eyes narrowed and after a moment he finally gives in, leaning over and peering down into Boyd's eye. "Yellow. I don't like yellow. And red's like, too predictable."

"I hope that's not your only reasoning," she remarks dryly as she cuts a red wire and then a blue one before digging in and pulling the eye out of Boyd's socket. He doesn't even wince.

"You know me better than that," he grins as he opens his hand expectantly. She places the robot eye there as he gets to work dismantling it completely and Scott tries not to think about how it was just in a man's face and hurl up his last eight meals.

Scott really doesn't understand why Stiles always tries this hard when they both know Lydia always wins. Then again he doesn't understand half of the things they say to each other, so what does he know.

.


End file.
